How to Effectively Test Your Uniqueness: Episode 224 or 142

When you create your business, product or service uniqueness, do you need to test it?

Incredible as it seems there's little point in doing any testing at all.

Let's find out why testing is practically impossible and how instead of wasting time on research, you should follow three steps to make sure your uniqueness occupies a permanent part of your client's brain.

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When you have settled on your uniqueness, how can you test it?

What is likely to happen to a woman's bikini, when she's surfing?
“If you're a woman, surfing with a bikini was slightly out of the question. You'd be out in the waves, walk out of the water and literally you've lost your bottoms,” said the business owner, Anna Jerstrom. So Jerstrom decided to create sexy, bright bikinis. And the uniqueness? Bikinis that stay on, no matter how rough the surf. And with this single-minded pursuit, investment banker, Anna Jerstrom started a business called Calavera.

Wouldn't she need to test the uniqueness before she began?

In almost every case, testing a uniqueness is completely unnecessary. One of the biggest reasons why you shouldn't be bothered with testing a uniqueness is because you're unlikely to have any competition.

Let's take the uniqueness of Calavera, for example. Why did Jerstrom start the company? Surely she should have been able to find some bikinis that didn't slide off in the surf. Even with the power of the Internet at her disposal, she was still running into dead ends. It means that there will be hundreds, if not thousands of customers who are also finding it hard to get a decent product.

That line of thought may not sound reasonable to you, but let's look at the alternative, shall we?

Let's say you decide to sell a product. Maybe it's an information product that's based on presentations. When you look on Amazon.com, you're likely to find at least 5,000 books on presentations. Do you really want to go through every sales page trying to find out what's unique about the presentation product?

Clients don't care about doing such extensive research either. They just want to show up to your business whether online or offline, and they want you to explicitly tell them why you are different from the rest of the competition. Whether you have a product, training or a service, your uniqueness doesn't need testing, simply because it's impossible to do a test.

But there's another good reason why you shouldn't bother to test

The biggest reason why you should just go ahead and run your uniqueness is because the competition is lazy or confused, or both. Most companies are clearly at sea when asked what makes them unique. If you have a uniqueness factor in place, that puts you way ahead of your competitors. However, there's also another reason why you can go ahead quite happily.

Even if your competition has a uniqueness, it's not much use unless they use it on a frequent basis

A uniqueness itself is not enough for clients to remember what is being said. Volvo is known for their safe cars because they ran endless ads about safety. Dominos made a billion dollars selling pizza because of their “30 minutes or it's free” slogan. Think for a second about your competitors right now. Can you quickly bring up their uniqueness?

It's not enough to have a uniqueness, you have to do so much more

In fact, you have to take three steps to make sure the uniqueness does its job properly.

Step 1: You have to consistently get the word out.
Step 2: You have to state the position of the competition.
Step 3: You have to state your own position.

Let's go through the steps—To Getting Your Uniqueness Recognised

Step 1: Get the word out

This means a uniqueness can't just sit around. It has to be repeated in some form or the other, over and over again. If you've listened to the “Three Month Vacation” podcast, for example, when I talk about 5000bc, I will repeat the same thing almost ad nauseam. I will say, “5000bc is a place where introverts meet because they feel safe”.

The same message will be sent out in articles, in books—in just about every medium possible. And the message never changes much, if at all. Keeping that message consistent is what is critical. If you keep changing the message simply because you're bored of it, you've lost more than half the uniqueness battle. You want to make sure you get the uniqueness as simple as possible and then continue to mention it everywhere.

When you consider that you may have more than one product or service, you have to pick your battles

For instance, the uniqueness of Psychotactics is “tiny increments”. But often the overall company uniqueness is of little value to the client, because they are more focused on the product or service, instead. However, at Psychotactics, we have many products, so I pick the uniqueness depending on the medium.

However, while I'm explaining something in the podcast or in an article, I will make sure to talk about the uniqueness of Psychotactics courses and how they're not just information, but about skill (see, I did it again). You don't want to bring up the uniqueness of every single product or service. You want to make sure you have a few entry points.

For us at Psychotactics, those entry points that need to be stressed are The Brain Audit, 5000bc and the courses. It's not like the rest of the products and services don't matter. They do, but the uniqueness of those products and services are on the sales page or sales pitch itself.

It's important to have your doorways

Just rattling off a dozen uniquenesses for a dozen products doesn't get any message across to clients. Pick two or three of your services or products—or if you like, the uniqueness of your company. And then keep hammering them home in pre-selected areas of your marketing.

But that's only the first part of making sure your uniqueness is heard. To make sure you get the point across, you have to state the position of the competition.

Step 2: Stating the position of the competition

Ever noticed how shiny Harley Davidson bikes tend to be? The reason for their shiny nature is probably the diligence of the bike owner, but equally, it's how the bike has been positioned in the Harley owner's mind. Harley owners have been known to truck their bikes across and then ride them locally.

After all, the bikes have to be in pristine condition at all times. The BMW bike owners, on the other hand, seem to favour the dust and dirt, pushing their bikes across all sorts of punishing conditions.

Even if the above description of BMW vs. Harley is not 100% accurate, it demonstrates the difference

And uniqueness is a point of difference. To make sure you get the point of difference across, you need to have the competition clearly in your sights. If you have a million-dollar promotion budget, you can continue to mention your slogan, but if you're a small business, you tend to get very few chances. Which is why it's important to bring the competition when you're describing your own point of uniqueness.

So first, you have to pick your “enemy.”

The enemy may not be a company. It could be a way of doing things. So when I say, “other courses give you a money back guarantee, but no guarantee of skill”, I'm not taking on anyone in particular. I'm simply taking on an aspect of online courses. If you were to say, “other yoga classes have a lot of yoga routines, but don't necessarily pay attention to what can injure you long after you've left the yoga class.” Or to take a third example involving microphones: Other microphones pick up unwanted noise and reflections, in a bad-sounding, untreated room.”

Once you've defined the enemy's characteristics you know what you're battling against

No doubt the enemy will have many flaws, but your job is to pick one. Uniqueness is about “one thing”, and the moment you pick the opponent's flaw, you can easily position yourself against them. Which takes us to the third step, doesn't it?

Step 3: You have to state your own position

Your position is the exact opposite of the flaw you've picked.
If they work too slowly, you work quickly.
If they give you 200 pages of information, you give only the ten pages needed.
If they sell ripe bananas, you sell them green, so they don't ripen too quickly.

With the Calavera bikinis, Anna Jerstrom's enemy was “the terribly fitting bikinis”, and her position was “bikinis that stay on, no matter how rough the surf.” You can pick up anything off your desk and ask yourself why you use that particular product. And the same goes for any service as well. Or company for that matter.

When I give a presentation, for example, I want to stand out from the rest of the presenters, so I talk about how businesses make a gazillion dollars, but we make more than enough, and we take three months off every year, not working, but completely on vacation. When you state the competitor's position and contrast it with yours, you can see the lights going off in the prospect's brain.

Which brings us to that testing bit again: how do you know if your uniqueness is truly unique?

It's the nodding of the head. When you state your uniqueness, the clients tend to see the difference between your competitor and you. And you get this smile, this slight nod of the head. You know you've struck a chord with the client. Oh, and there's the echo.

When you ask the client what you do, they should be able to echo your words perfectly

Listen for the echo. Are they missing out important bits? If they are, your uniqueness may not be as simple as you think and you'll need to edit it a bit. If they're totally off tangent, then you haven't made your point as precise as it could be. If you run into your client a month or six months from now and they can echo your uniqueness perfectly, then you've got a uniqueness that has resonated with them, and it's truly a point of difference.

Finally, a lot of uniqueness comes about when you're not expecting it

That line about how our courses are different from every other online course wasn't something I figured out while sitting down and going through this exercise. I probably said it in response to a question on an interview or when trying to explain what makes our courses different. Over times, I made sure to bring it up often so that it got a bit of an edge.

A lot of your uniqueness is going to pop up when you least expect it, so make sure you write it down when you hear yourself saying something interesting about your product or service. Nonetheless, as a starting point, defining the enemy is a very crucial exercise. It's only when you define the enemy that you can clarify your own position in a memorable manner.

To get your uniqueness really charging down the road you need to consider all three points:

Step 1: You have to consistently get the word out.
Step 2: You have to state the position of the competition.
Step 3: You have to state your own position.

And that's how the uniqueness fits—just like a Calavera bikini.

Oh, one more thing: Calavera closed down its business in 2017. They decided they wanted to do something different and after a good five years of running the business, they decided to shut shop.

P.S. What would it be like to stand out from the competition in a way that customers choose you over everyone else?

Oh and before I go

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